I'm not sure why XP has this problem, but it seems to take any possible opportunity to install C-Media sound drivers that are incompatible with my motherboard's Realtek sound chip. The C-Media package is also very hard to get off machines once it is on.

It did it again on my current box and though I did the uninstall, it still has left the system messed up.

Any ideas of how to clean this up? I'm sure this is a very common problem.

Go to Start -> Run -> type MSCONFIG and go to the Startup tab. Disable the cmicnfg.cpl item in Startup.

To avoid this from happening again watch what gets installed during the automatic Microsoft Updates. You can also visit the Windows Update site, do the Custom Scan, and then under Drivers check the option that says to Hide the selected update. I assume thats where the CMedia driver keeps coming from.

Go to Start -> Run -> type MSCONFIG and go to the Startup tab. Disable the cmicnfg.cpl item in Startup.

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Will do. Thanks!

I can't believe MS is still doing this. I had the same problem six months ago with a different box. You'd think that it would try to detect the type of sound chip on the board before forcing this, at least by now.

With AC97 solutions its possible to use a number of drivers with the hardware DAC.

I'm not familiar with this, but I may have to re-do my audio setup.

This whole mess started when I used some headphones in the computer's front-mounted headphone jack for the first time. Though they worked fine, this apparently forced some complicated Realtek audio configuration program to come up. It continued to do so over and over and over and over until I removed the driver and software, then started over by downloading a new driver from MS, which was the dread C-Media monster.

I appear to have more or less disabled this, with your help -- though in searching Google, I see that actually getting completely rid of the C-Media stuff may be more complicated. I reinstalled the Realtek audio drivers from the momboard CD and bypassed installing the elaborate and unwanted audio program that started all this. I just want basic audio line out to a boombox and don't need all the other stuff.

At some point during all this, I started getting pops and dropouts coming through my speakers, which I understand is typical of messed-up AC'97 audio chip configuration. I'm not sure if that's still there or not.

I'm going to give it a run tonight (when the rest of the network is idle and can't contribute any confusing variables) with streaming audio and see if it's OK then. If not, I imagine I'll have to start from scratch and get back to where I was before plugging in the fatal headphones.

THIS THREAD HAS EXPIRED.
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